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Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: 17-year-old racing prodigy Connor Zilisch, who has already won the Rolex 24 at Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring this year and recently made his NASCAR national series debut at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, where he won the pole for the Truck Series race and finished fourth. This interview has been edited and condensed, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.
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1. What is currently the No. 1 thing on your bucket list?
Probably to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans — and I want to do it soon, too. Because I won Daytona, I won Sebring (the other two races in the triple crown of endurance racing). To win Le Mans and to win those three endurance races would be really cool.
Do you feel pressure to do that before you sign some full-time NASCAR deal and then you have to do NASCAR every year during Le Mans?
Yeah, partially. … This year is kind of my open year to go do what I’ll enjoy and what would look good on my resume. So there is pressure to do it soon before things start to get really busy on this side of the world.
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2. How much media coverage of NASCAR do you consume?
I probably spend way too much time on Twitter, first of all. But I enjoy learning about NASCAR and everything about it, because I didn’t really grow up around the sport. I was always a road racing guy and grew up watching F1 and IMSA. So I need to learn it at a quicker pace than a lot of guys in this garage.
3. Beyond winning, what is the best way to measure success in racing?
Being a likable person. In the garage, it’s such a small community. Being friends with everyone is really important, and that can get you almost as far as maybe talent can. It’s being someone you know guys want to come up to and say, “Hey” every time they see them and being well-liked. It’s like Rajah (Caruth) when he won at Vegas, everybody was so pumped for him. That’s the kind of guy I want to be; I want to be friends with everyone.
So how do you manage that with other drivers? I see you and Jesse Love go back and forth and like you said, right now, it’s all good. But if you’re competing in the same series Sunday for wins and you run into each other, how do you foresee that going?
As an example, I’ve grown up around Brent Crews and we’ve been racing against each other since we were seven or eight years old. I’ve always told him and our parents, “Look, things may happen on the racetrack. But that’s not a good representation of who we are and the people we are. What happens on the track is way different than what happens off the track.”
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That’s something I’ve learned to live by in the racing world. Yeah, you have to be the bigger person to be able to accept those things sometimes. But it’s what’s needed when we’re going to be around each other for the rest of our lives in racing. You don’t want to hate someone when you’re racing against them every week.
4. What is an opinion you have about NASCAR that you do not think is shared by the fans?
Probably the love for road racing. A lot of the fans don’t see it the same way I may see it. It is well-liked throughout the garage and the guys enjoy it. The guys who don’t enjoy it are the ones who maybe aren’t quite as good at it. But the diversity and being able to race in different scenarios is what makes a really good race car driver.
5. What is the biggest thing fans don’t realize about what you do for a living?
The amount of stuff that goes on behind the scenes — even for me, and I’m not even a Cup guy yet. From the outside, it may look like a one-day job, right? You show up to the track on Saturday, you race on Sunday, you get out of there and you go back to your family for the week. But there’s a lot of responsibilities drivers have that people don’t see. And even the crew guys — these guys are away from their families 38 weekends a year, and they’re at the shop every day. It’s a straining lifestyle, and it’s definitely not easy on relationships and the people around you, but it’s what’s needed to be successful.
6. This question is related to a current topic involving yourself, and I’m changing it up for each person. You told a story about when you won the Rolex and you going to get it fitted and when you walked into the store, the employees thought it was fake and you were a kid who had been duped. Can you tell us more about that?
When you win a Rolex at the 24 Hours of Daytona, it comes in what’s called a “TV box.” So it’s a big box and generally, they don’t give those to people who buy a Rolex at a Rolex store or a dealer. So usually, they see those with fakes. Before I even opened the box, I could tell they were judging me and looking at me funny. And I kind of expected it, right? A 17-year-old walking in with a Rolex isn’t really what they see every day. But I knew what I had, so I was walking in with confidence.
Still, those guys probably see some crazy things working at a high-end jewelry store, so they were skeptical and questioned me before I opened it. And then I opened the box and I guess it was a bit of a shock when I showed him the backside of it and gave them the backstory to it.
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But that was a funny experience and one I won’t forget. It was a surreal experience to win that race at 17 years old.
And now Sebring on top of that, too? Your head must just be spinning.
Sebring was almost cooler. It wasn’t as emotional and it wasn’t as surreal of a moment. But I got to finish the race at Sebring, so I felt like I was a bigger piece of the puzzle at that race. At Daytona, Christian Rasmussen finished the race, and then he wasn’t with us at Sebring; he’s an IndyCar driver, so he couldn’t make it. So it was cool to finish the race and feel like I really earned it racing against guys who have raced IndyCar and F1.
7. This is a wild-card question. You recently spoke about the kart race you won in Italy against 163 other drivers while living in Europe. I’m imagining if I won that and I’m in Europe, I’m on the F1 path. Was there any disappointment that wasn’t the path you ultimately ended up on? Not that you’re upset to end up here in NASCAR, but I’m sure some of the people you were in that race with are probably going F1 someday. How do you wrap your head around, “I was good enough to beat them, but I don’t have the resources to actually make that the path?”
It’s funny, because Kimi Antonelli, he’s a big name over there right now (The Athletic’s Luke Smith recently wrote about how Antonelli is under consideration to replace Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes). And he finished probably 20th in that race. I went back and looked at the results of that race a few months ago and just looked through the names, and it’s crazy how many of those kids I beat are on the way to F1.
I wouldn’t really say it’s disappointment; it’s maybe a little bit of regret for not chasing it harder. I just lost hope. I was like, “There’s no way I’m gonna make F1.” You need billions of dollars and it just almost isn’t even possible. But if I was over there right now, with the hype around F1 in America, I probably would have a different mindset about it. Five years ago, F1 in America wasn’t really a thing. When “Drive to Survive” and all that came about, that really changed the view on F1. So I might have changed my mindset a little bit today.
But honestly, I’m happy with where I’m at and with the dream I’m chasing. I get to live in America and be with my family. It feels like home. It’s still really cool to be chasing a professional racing career.
8. What do you like about where you grew up?
I grew up in south Charlotte. I like the small-town feel and still being close enough to have good restaurants and a good place to go on the weekend. I had a really good school and a really good group of friends. … It’s been great, and especially since I moved to Mooresville (north of Charlotte), everywhere I go, I run into someone I know. That’s the small-town feel I enjoy.
9. What personality trait are you the most proud of?
I like how outgoing I am. I wouldn’t say I was born with it, but I have some natural ability to go up to anybody and not be afraid. A lot of that came from the time I spent in Europe. That was some of the most uncomfortable times of my life, ever. You go to this place, you don’t speak the same language at 11 or 12 years old, without my parents (Zilisch’s parents had to stay back and work, so he lived with his karting mechanic/driver coach in Europe, who also supervised him). Even relating it to racing, I like to put myself in uncomfortable positions — and that was definitely an uncomfortable position. That helped me grow a lot as a person.
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You’re 11 years old and you’re across the world from your parents. I’m sure that was just an unbelievable time in your life.
He was basically my second dad, and on some days, he wouldn’t even want to go to dinner with me. So he’d put me on a bicycle and send me into this town (in Italy) on my own. I had a credit card and I would just kind of find my way. In the moment, it was maybe not so cool, but looking back on it, it was damn cool. Those are times I’ll remember forever.
10. Which driver would you least like to be stuck with on an elevator?
Honestly, I want to say (close friend) Jesse Love. We would just get into a fight or something because we know each other so well. We’d start blaming each other and it probably wouldn’t go over well. I don’t really know many of these guys too well, so with a lot of people, it wouldn’t be too frightening of a situation. But with Jesse, we’d probably end up in a fight. (Laughs)
11. What is a run-in you’ve had with a driver that TV or the media missed?
We had a CARS Tour race last year, a Pro Late Model race. And I was super slow; for some reason, we missed it (on the setup). Cole Butcher was trying to pass me and, I mean, I was a moving chicane. He spun me out getting by me and I came up to him after the race.
I’m not gonna go up to someone and try and fight them, right? I’m more of like, “I’ll kill you with kindness.” So I went up to him, and I was trying to start a conversation. His crew chief walked over and they all think I’m getting ready to fight him. And I just start giving him the most honest explanation ever. I’m like, “Man, what was your reasoning for that?” I think he was shocked by it, because he was expecting me to start yelling at him and he was gonna start yelling back, but he honestly was lost for words. I would have liked to have a video of it, because it was honestly pretty funny, his reaction when I started talking to him in a super soft voice.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next interview. The last one was with Justin Haley. He says, “All of us jumped around to a bunch of different series when coming through the ranks, and I loved TA2 racing when I was younger. What’s been your favorite series so far?”
The Mazda MX5 Cup. The racing is so incredible. In a lot of (other) races I do, whether it’s a 45-minute race or a 12-hour race or a 24-hour race, you always have a time in the race where you’re not really doing anything. You’re just doing practice laps. But in that series, there is never a corner where you don’t go into the corner staring at your mirrors, wondering if there’s someone next to you. It’s 45 minutes of pure chaos. The races are always so incredible. They always come down to the last corner, and you can’t pull away. It’s made me a way better driver, and I feel super aware of all my surroundings, especially because of that series.
The next interview is with Todd Gilliland. Do you have a question I might be able to ask him?
Todd and I have played pickleball before. As a NASCAR driver, it’s sometimes difficult to find pastimes during the week. So I’d like to ask Todd: What’s your favorite pastime when you’re not doing anything during the week?
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Connor Zilisch at last month’s Truck Series race in Austin, Texas: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
